By Deb Mateik

With the increase of mobile devices such as the iPhone, iPod touch, other MP3 players, and portable computers, students are embracing the option of continuing learning begun in a classroom when they are on the run. The university’s iTunes U Academic site provides the infrastructure and tools for faculty members to host podcasts and vodcasts (video podcasts) in an environment that mirrors the look and feel of Apple’s iTunes U, but that is private to the membership of a course or the university community.

More than 2,100 media files were uploaded to the university’s iTunes U Academic site during the last academic year, and the site received in excess of 19,000 browser hits. These numbers are expected to grow this year as the resource moves from a pilot phase to full production. In addition, several new tools have been developed, enabling instructors to provide drop box and shared access resources to students and allowing instructors to link to content hosted on the university’s podcast.umd.edu server.

The drop box enables students to upload digital media for instructor review. Now, instead of submitting a paper response to a class assignment, students can submit audio or visual responses. Shared access takes that concept a step further by enabling students to become contributors to the learning of their peers by making their digital media available to all members of the course community.

Sizeable podcast files can be stored on podcast.umd.edu where you can link to them from other locations, such as iTunes U Academic, ELMS, or college or departmental servers. A new podcast feed generation tool has been created that simplifies that linking. Visit the Web links below for more information about requesting and managing a space on iTunes U and about the podcast feed generator tool on podcast.umd.edu:
     https://learningonline.umd.edu/itunesu/welcome.jsf
     http://otal.umd.edu/podcast_umd_edu